Chinese Grand Prix: Williams preview Shanghai

14 April, 2014

Williams team and drivers preview the Chinese Grand Prix, Round 4 of the 2014 Formula 1 World Championship, in Shanghai;

Rob Smedley: Shanghai is one of the very modern circuits with a good mix of high speed and low speed corners. It is a very particular track in that it has two corners which are very hard on the front left tyre. Turn 1 is a righthander that has a very fast entry but slows down a lot for the apex. Turn 12 is similar in that the car is loaded onto the front left as you exit onto the back straight. Both corners can give you issues with tyre management, especially front graining. The straight from Turn 12 to the hairpin is the longest straight on the 2014 calendar so we have to make sure we are set up for that, whilst still focusing on other areas of the track. The track is very bumpy and tends to change year on year, so the mechanical set-up has to circumnavigate any issues that the surface may hold.

Felipe Massa: There is a very long straight in China which will be good for overtaking, especially for our car as we have a good top speed. There are also low speed corners where good downforce is needed, so we hope we can make improvements on these sections. We hope to have a few new parts which should help with grip and other areas that we need to improve. We still need to improve the car in the wet, so we are hoping the weekend will be dry, I also prefer the dry, but there is hard work going on to improve the car.

Valtteri Bottas: So far the season has been positive and we are looking forward to China. We still need to make a step forward in performance, especially as this track is quite different to Bahrain. The long straight will be our strong point as we can overtake, but we need to be good through the corners to be close enough to take advantage. We are hoping to improve our downforce for the slower sections of the track. Once we improve this, it should improve our overall running in all conditions so it is an area we are focusing on. The weather can be variable in China but at this point we are looking for a dry race.